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Starting from the theoretical mechanism of profit sharing between finance and the real economy, this paper reviews and analyzes the profitability of China's banking industry and makes a horizontal comparison with the banking industry of the United States, Japan, and Germany.

Based on the panel threshold model, it is found that there is a dual-threshold asymmetric effect between banking profit and the growth of real economy. When the net profit rate of the banking industry is lower than 0.491%, the increase in banking profitability will inhibit the growth of real economy due to profit grabbing; when the rate falls within the range of 0.491–0.801%, the increase in bank profitability is conducive to the growth of real economy.

Finance and the real economy are in the most comfortable symbiotic state; when the rate is higher than 0.801%, the continued increase in bank profitability will weaken the promotion effect of finance on the real economy, but bank profitability and the growth of real economy are still in a symbiotic state of positive promotion.

The promotion effect of China's bank profitability to the growth of real economy has shifted from the suboptimal state to the optimal range as a whole, which is attributed to the strong deleveraging and strict supervision of the Chinese government after 2016, the timely and decisive “stepping on the brakes”, pulling the financial sector back from the “illusion” caused by “self-circulated” profits and preventing it from harming the real economy.

In this chapter, rephrasing Spivak's question into ‘can subaltern children speak?’, I reorient the research on China's gigantic population of children and youths in rural migrant families towards a critical interpretative approach. Based on life history and longitudinal ethnographic interview gathered with three cases, I unpack the multiple meanings migrants' children attach to mobility in their childhood experiences. First, despite emotional difficulties, children see their parents' out-migration more as a ‘mobility imperative’ than their abandonment of parental responsibilities, which should be contextualized in China's long-term urban-biased social policies and the resultant development gaps in rural and urban societies. Second, the seemingly ‘unstable’ and ‘flexible’ mobility patterns observed in migrant families should be understood in relation to a long-term family social mobility strategy to promote children's educational achievement and future attainment. The combination of absent class politics in an illiberal society with an enduring ideology of education-based meritocracy in Confucianism makes this strategy a culturally legitimate channel of social struggle for recognition and respect for the subaltern. Last, children in migrant families are active contributors to their families' everyday organization amidst mobilities through sharing care and household responsibilities, and developing temporal and mobility strategies to keep alive intergenerational exchanges and family togetherness. The study uncovers coexisting resilience and vulnerabilities of migrants' children in their ‘doing class’ in contemporary China. It also contributes insights into our understanding of the diversity of childhoods in Asian societies at the intersection of familyhood, class dynamics and cultural politics.

This study aims to investigate the cause of high-order wheel polygonization in a plateau high-speed electric multiple unit (EMU) train.

A series of field tests were conducted to measure the vibration accelerations of the axle box and bogie when the wheels of the EMU train passed through tracks with normal rail roughness after re-profiling. Additionally, the dynamic characteristics of the track, wheelset and bogie were also measured. These measurements provided insights into the mechanisms that lead to wheel polygonization.

The results of the field tests indicate that wheel polygonal wear in the EMU train primarily exhibits 14–16 and 25–27 harmonic orders. The passing frequencies of wheel polygonization were approximately 283–323 Hz and 505–545 Hz, which closely match the dominated frequencies of axle box and bogie vibrations. These findings suggest that the fixed-frequency vibrations originate from the natural modes of the wheelset and bogie, which can be excited by wheel/rail irregularities.

The study provides novel insights into the mechanisms of high-order wheel polygonization in plateau high-speed EMU trains. Futher, the results indicate that operating the EMU train on mixed lines at variable speeds could potentially mitigate high-order polygonal wear, providing practical value for improving the safety, performance and maintenance efficiency of high-speed EMU trains.

This paper aims to verify whether the integration of sustainability in executive compensation positively affects firms’ non-financial performance and whether corporate governance characteristics enhance the relationship between sustainability compensation and firms’ non-financial performance and to expand the domain of the impact of sustainability on non-financial performance.

This analysis is based on a sample of companies listed on the Milan Italian Stock Exchange from the Financial Times Milan Stock Exchange Index over the 2016–2020 period. Regression analysis was used by using data retrieved from the Refinitiv Eikon database and the sample firms’ remuneration reports.

The findings of this paper show that embedding sustainability in executive compensation positively affects firms’ non-financial performance. The results of this paper also reveal that specific corporate governance features can improve the impact of sustainability on non-financial performance.

This analysis is limited to Italian firms included in the Financial Times Milan Stock Exchange Index; however, the findings are highly significant.

The findings provide regulators with useful insights for considering the integration of sustainability goals into executive remuneration. Another implication is that policymakers should require – at least – listed firms to fulfil specific corporate governance structural requirements. Finally, the findings can provide investors and financial analysts with a greater awareness of the role played by executive remuneration in the long-term value-creation process.

This paper contributes to addressing the relationship among sustainability, remuneration and non-financial disclosure, drawing on the stakeholder–agency theoretical framework and focusing on Italian firms. This issue has received limited attention with controversial results in the literature.

An emerging line of research examining the role of numerological superstition in the capital market shows that it has significant impact on investor behavior (Bhattacharya, Kuo, Lin, & Zhao, 2018; Hirshleifer, Jian, & Zhang 2018). However, to the authors’ best knowledge, there is a dearth of evidence on whether numerological superstition affects corporate behavior. This study fills this void by examining the association between investors’ numerological superstition and earnings management using Chinese data.

Chinese culture views 6 and 8 as lucky numbers. Using Chinese publicly traded firms, the authors examine the relation between investors’ numerological superstition and corporate financial reporting behavior.

The results suggest that firms reporting lucky earnings-per-share (EPS) numbers ending with 6 or 8 are more likely to engage in earnings management. These firms also raise more capital through seasoned equity offerings in the following year; however, they do not have more capital investments. Instead, their controlling shareholders siphon a significant amount of capital through related party transactions. Overall, the findings suggest that managers collude with controlling shareholders to manage earnings by exploiting the superstitious beliefs of minority shareholders.

To the authors’ best knowledge, there is a dearth of evidence on whether numerological superstition affects corporate behavior. This study fills this void by examining the association between investors’ numerological superstition and earnings management using Chinese data.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the real urbanization level in China so as to provide a measurement that can be compared with the international level.

Taking into consideration 300m residents living in the administrative towns (300m residents here are referred to the population in administrative towns, including those in all counties), the gap between the urbanization rate of China and that of the world average becomes much wider.

China, however, implements the administrative system of government at the central, provincial, municipal, county and township levels. By city, it means the jurisdiction at and above the level of county, which includes the municipality directly under the central government, prefecture-level municipal and county. By town, it means the jurisdiction below the level of county (including the Chengguan Town, or capital town, where the county government is located) and exclusive of rural townships.

China has witnessed rapid development for 40 years since the reform and opening up in 1978. Nowadays, China has already stepped into the period of post-industrialization, with its urbanization rate (UR) of permanent population reaching 58.58 percent. However, on the basis of registered population, the UR is 43.37 percent, which is not only far below the average level of 81.3 percent in high-income countries, but also lower than the average of 65.8 percent in upper middle-income countries which are comparable to China in terms of per capita income. (The classification of state income level is based on the data of national income per capita and division standards in 2016 from the World Bank, in which annual revenue per capita in high-income countries reaches over US$12,736 and that in upper middle-income countries between US$4,126 and US$12,735.)

The authors enrich and extend the existing institutional anomie theory (IAT) in the hope of sharpening the understanding of the joint effects of selected cultural values and social institutional changes on women's pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts. The authors theorize that women are culturally discouraged to pursue pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts or wealth accumulation in a specific culture. This discouragement creates an anomic strain that motivates women to deviate from cultural prescriptions by engaging in pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts at a faster speed. Building on this premise, the authors hypothesize that changes in social institutions facilitate the means of achievement for women due to the potential opportunities inherent in such institutional changes.

Using a randomly selected sample of 1,431 registered active individual users with a minimum of 10,000 followers on a leading entertainment live-streaming platform in the People's Republic of China, the authors examined a unique mix of cultural and institutional changes and their effects on the speed of women's engagement in live-streaming platform activity.

The authors find support for the impact of the interaction between changes in social institution conditions and cultural values. Unexpectedly, the authors also find a negative impact of cultural values on women's speed of engaging in pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts.

The authors add institutional change to the IAT framework and provide a novel account for the variation in the pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts by women on the platform.

This study aims to take advantage of the unprecedented anti-corruption campaign launched in China in December 2012 and examine the effect of improved public governance on tunneling.

This study uses a sample of Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchange listed companies from 2010 to 2014 and conduct regression analyses to investigate the effect of improved public governance attributed to the anti-corruption campaign on tunneling.

This study finds that the level of tunneling decreased significantly after the anti-corruption campaign, suggesting that increased public governance effectively curbs tunneling. Cross-sectional results show that this mitigating effect is more pronounced for non-SOE firms, especially non-SOE firms with political connections, firms audited by non-Big 8 auditors, firms with a large divergence between control rights and cash flow rights and firms located in areas with lower marketization.

This study highlights the importance of anti-corruption initiatives in improving public governance and in turn reducing tunneling. This study provides important implications for many other emerging economies to improve public governance.

This study contributes to the literature on the role of public governance in constraining corporate agency problems and advances the understanding of the economic consequences of China's anti-corruption campaign in the context of tunneling.

This study aims to assess the use of variational quantum imaginary time evolution for solving partial differential equations using real-amplitude ansätze with full circular entangling layers. A graphical mapping technique for encoding impulse functions is also proposed.

The Smoluchowski equation, including the Derjaguin–Landau–Verwey–Overbeek potential energy, is solved to simulate colloidal deposition on a planar wall. The performance of different types of entangling layers and over-parameterization is evaluated.

Colloidal transport can be modelled adequately with variational quantum simulations. Full circular entangling layers with real-amplitude ansätze lead to higher-fidelity solutions. In most cases, the proposed graphical mapping technique requires only a single bit-flip with a parametric gate. Over-parameterization is necessary to satisfy certain physical boundary conditions, and higher-order time-stepping reduces norm errors.

Variational quantum simulation can solve partial differential equations using near-term quantum devices. The proposed graphical mapping technique could potentially aid quantum simulations for certain applications.

This study shows a concrete application of variational quantum simulation methods in solving practically relevant partial differential equations. It also provides insight into the performance of different types of entangling layers and over-parameterization. The proposed graphical mapping technique could be valuable for quantum simulation implementations. The findings contribute to the growing body of research on using variational quantum simulations for solving partial differential equations.

This paper aims to optimize the charging schedule for battery electric buses (BEBs) to minimize the charging cost considering the time-of-use electricity price.

The BEBs charging schedule optimization problem is formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming model. The objective is to minimize the total charging cost of the BEB fleet. The charge decision of each BEB at the end of each trip is to be determined. Two types of constraints are adopted to ensure that the charging schedule meets the operational requirements of the BEB fleet and that the number of charging piles can meet the demand of the charging schedule.

This paper conducts numerical cases to validate the effect of the proposed model based on the actual timetable and charging data of a bus line. The results show that the total charge cost with the optimized charging schedule is 15.56% lower than the actual total charge cost under given conditions. The results also suggest that increasing the number of charging piles can reduce the charging cost to some extent, which can provide a reference for planning the number of charging piles.

Considering time-of-use electricity price in the BEBs charging schedule will not only reduce the operation cost of electric transit but also make the best use of electricity resources.